With the economy still in the dumps, many families are struggling to make ends meet never mind pay off debt. But if you’re trying to get out of debt and aren’t sure of the most efficient way to do it, visit the Snowball Calculator.

The Snowball Calculator is designed to figure out the least expensive way for you to pay off your debt. Just fill in the form with the loan information on each loan, how much money you have to put towards debt payment, and click the “Calculate” button.  You’ll get instructions on how much to send to each lender every month and how many months it will take to pay off the debts.

To calculate your debt repayment or to learn more, visit the Snowball Calculator.

“If your food and wine adventures are more about the journey than the destination, Behind the Burner is the perfect place to explore your culinary desires.” From BehindTheBurner.

BehindtheBurner.com offers advice, tricks and secrets from the country’s top chefs. Learn about the chefs’ and restaurateurs, watch videos of chef’s cooking signature foods (I liked the chocolate french toast by Chef Peyard – Chocolate Epiphany), and read articles on everything from wine and travel, to how-to and health. Plus you can get great recipes.

If cooking (and eating) is your life, be sure to visit BehindtheBurner.com.

One of the hassles of frugal online shopping is finding something you want, then having to hunt for coupons and discount codes. But not anymore. DropDownDeals.com offers a free toolbar that will provide discount codes while you’re at the online store. It saves you time and money!

The DropDownDeals toolbar is available for IE 7, IE 8, IE 9, and all versions of Firefox and Chrome on Windows, and Firefox on Mac.

To download or learn more, visit DropDownDeals.com.

Having trouble finding someone to watch your kids? Planning a trip and need someone to watch Fido? SitterCity offers a resources for families to find full-time childcare or the occasional sitter. It provides help for other needs including pet sitting, senior care, housekeeping and tutoring.  SitterCity provides a directory where you can search profiles of sitters and helpers to learn their experience, expertise, and references. Some sitters have their profiles marked with “background check”.

The database is fairly extensive; there were several sitters listed from my tiny, rural area. You can do a search and see a list of sitters for free, but to get their details you’ll need to join. The service offers a free 7 day trial and then a monthly or yearly membership option.

Find great sitters in your area on Sittercity.com. Try Sittercity for free today!

I tend to relax with a good book, but my son and husband enjoy computer games. The problem is that getting new games or participating in online games can get expensive. But over at Game House you can get a new free game everyday! Or if you want to buy a game, its only $5.99.

To get the free game, visit Game House and check the link in the top right corner. Check out all the other fun games as well.

One of the great things about the Internet is the ability to research great deals on everything you need. The trick is to sort through thousands of resources to find the deals you want and need. Over at Wise Bread, they have made the deal finding a little bit easier. On its Deals Roundup page, Wise Bread lists the day’s best deals, coupons and freebies from the best bargain sites on the web.

The Coupon Mom is offering 3 free ebooks that can help you save big at the grocery and drug stores. And you don’t need to register or give your email to get them!

I recently saw the Coupon Mom on a re-run of Oprah. She bought $125 worth of groceries for about $37. I was impressed! So I visited her site to get the low down on grocery shopping. The ebooks offer some great tips to get you started. However, I think discount grocery shopping is a skill that is developed over time. I ended up spending 25% over my normal budget and spent over 5 hours (3 of them grocery shopping) in the process. I can only hope that the 6 boxes of cereal, 8 cans of diced tomatoes and other items I stockpiled will last long enough to have the end result be a lower monthly grocery bill.

To learn more about the Coupon Mom and to get the free ebooks, visit CouponMom.com

Have you ever sent what you thought was a nice email, only to get a curt response? According to ToneCheck nearly 50% of all email is misinterpreted. I don’t doubt this. I’ve seen more than a few email-group discussions fall completely apart because of mis-communication.

Fortunately ToneCheck offers a service that will evaluate your email on its tone and provide suggestions if some words have a potential for mis-interpretation. ToneCheck “… evaluates words and phrases for the intensity of 8 primary emotions, allowing you to make corrections and adjust the overall tone before you send the wrong message.”

To test your tone or learn more, visit ToneCheck.

Guest Post from Dana Griffen

Remember the good ol’ days when buying a TV meant deciding between black and white or color, and choosing a size? Those were pretty much the only options for a long time. Well, there were also the sets that needed a television stand, and the console ones you’ve probably seen in your grandparents’ house. But buying a TV used to be a lot simpler. Now it’s plasma or LCD, 1080p, 1080i, or 720p, stand or wall-mounted. And then there’s the size—27 inches used to be a pretty good-sized TV. Now if your television measures less than 40 inches, it’s considered small. You know what? Leave all those specs and analyses to the techie in your life (and if it’s you, bonus!), and focus on what you’re going to do with that big, flat TV when you get it home.

Whoa, not so fast, there! Where are you going with that coaxial cable? Now hold on just a minute. You’re not going to go out and spend all that money on a nice, new, flat, big, high definition television and then just hook it up to cable, are you?! Not when there are so many other choices, many of which can save you a lot of money. Let’s take a look at some of the options.

Cable

Sure, it’s fast, it’s easy, and you probably already have it hooked up in your home right now. You could get home with your new set, hook up the cable, and be watching TV in no time. And then you can get that bill once a month that causes you physical pain every time you pay it. How many cable channels do you have? And how many do you actually watch? How does it feel to pay for a lot of something you never use?

The further into the 21^st century we get, and the more alternatives that become available, cable becomes more and more of a money pit. Why isn’t it à la carte yet? Why do we have to buy channels in packages? And why do they insist on separating the most popular channels into separate packages so that you’re compelled to buy more than one? You can only watch one channel at a time, unless you have picture-in-picture which is so last century. Get with the times. Ditch your cable provider, save yourself some money, and watch TV on your terms.

Box

Back when cable first started getting popular, it wasn’t just a matter of connecting a cable to your TV and firing it up. It was accessed through a cable box that usually sat on top of the TV. Televisions weren’t so thin back then, and you could actually put things on top of them. The box had push buttons to select channels, although there weren’t more than a couple dozen. That’s where the box began, but it’s evolved into so much more.

The most popular boxes for watching TV nowadays are TiVo, Roku, and even Apple TV, although that’s seen its share of problems. They all connect to both your TV and the Internet, accessing content from different sources.  http://www.roku.com/ provides programs from Amazon Video on Demand and Netflix. TiVo offers the same, plus regular broadcast TV. Apple TV gives you access to the iTunes store where you can buy or rent TV shows and movies. If you’re a Netflix fan, you can also gain access to their instant watching feature via the Xbox 360, Wii, and PlayStation 3 gaming consoles.

Streaming

Still not finding anything good to watch? Want to keep up with your prime-time favorites, or the soap opera you won’t admit you watch? No problem. You can find nearly any TV show, as well as thousands of movies online. Some are free, some you have to pay for, but with a little savvy, you can get rid of your cable and still know what’s happening on your favorite shows. All you have to do is connect your computer to your television set, and you’ll be able to watch streaming TV on large screen instead of your monitor.

All the major networks, and several cable networks offer full episodes of their shows on their websites. You’ll still have to sit through some annoying commercials, but there’s no fee to access the content. Just be aware that most shows only stay on the sites for a few days, so don’t procrastinate too much. Hulu is a great site for watching shows from several networks, both regular and cable. Only five episodes of any show are available at a time, so again, don’t wait too long if you’re trying to stay current with a storyline. Not sure where the show you want to watch is available online? No problem. Yidio aggregates over 500,000 episodes from more than 5,000 TV shows, along with about 30,000 movies. You search, either by title or genre, and Yidio will tell you where to find what you want online. All you have to do is click the link that comes up, and you’ll be watching TV online in no time.

See? With this many options, there’s no reason to spend all that money every month on cable. Cancel that service, and use the money you save to buy that really big flat-screen TV you’ve had your eye on. You know you want to.

About the Author: Dana Griffen is a freelance writer who specializes in getting the most of technology for for busy professionals. You can reach Dana at griffen.dana [at] gmail [dot] com.

To do lists can keep you focused and one task. But if you’re involved in a project that has many steps and to-do’s, it can be difficult to keep track and on target. There are many good online project management programs you can use for a fee, but if you don’t need to coordinate with colleagues, a simple free project management software can help.

Gantt Project Management offers a free easy to use chart-based project management tool.  With the Gantt Project Management tool you can create tree-heirarchies to help track tasks within projects, create dependencies between tasks (complete task A before completing task B), create PDF or HTML reports and exchange data with Microsoft(R) Project(TM) and spreadsheet applications.

The software can not only help keep business and work-related projects in order, but it can be used for personal projects such as home improvement plans.

Visit Gantt Project Software to learn more and download your free copy.